Saturday, February 06, 2010

Homeless Service & Treatment

In a scenario being played out in Atlanta, as reported by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, where the city wants homeless services to provide treatment to rise out of homelessness, but the homeless service provider doesn’t see their providing service as being dependent upon homeless clients also receiving treatment—a situation relevant in our area, where the largest homeless service providers have also not connected treatment to service.

This creates a situation in which all suffer; the homeless by being enabled to continue their present downward trajectory, the surrounding area with the corrosive magnet impact of service with no upward trajectory, and the homeless providers with the drift into an anti-business and anti-community stance often resulting.

An excerpt.

“A new lender has foreclosed on the massive homeless shelter run by the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, which operates at the corner of Peachtree and Pine streets in Midtown…

“The task force has been fighting with the city of Atlanta about its controversial shelter, which at time houses more than 700 homeless men.

“Debi Starnes, the homeless czar for Atlanta, contends the shelter's philosophy of sheltering men without requiring them to take steps such as entering a drug-treatment program prolongs their life on the street.”

This blog is part of the ongoing work of the American River Parkway Preservation Society to provide public education and advocacy around public policy issues that may be related to the Parkway and the adjacent communities along the American River in Sacramento, California.